I'm in the same situation Francesco is in. Other than a short gig in the Fall (for some people who knew my capabilities, hence no interview required) I haven't

I'm in the same situation Francesco is in. Other than a short gig in the Fall (for some people who knew my capabilities, hence no interview required) I haven't worked for pay in over a year. Fortunately I'm in a position to be able to not work as my spouse has a job with health insurance and we've got a decent amount of retirement savings. > Work takes up such a big part of your life that what you do is terribly important. I’ve been contacted by many companies and recruiters during this time, but the idea of going back to full-time work doing something I don’t care about or is not technically interesting just scares me. Yeah, scares is a good word here - I feel the same. I get contacted by recruiters and they describe the job and I get that dread in the pit of my stomach. I've been in tech for 30+ years, I've seen all kinds of companies, situations, bosses, coworkers. It's all a roll of the dice and from my experience the odds aren't on your side. > 1. You will give me interesting or meaningful work I tend to think that there's just not a lot of funding out there for the most interesting and meaningful. I had a job doing software development for an alternative energy company. They never got to stable funding and folded. That was interesting, meaningful work, but they couldn't get money to keep it going. > 3. No technical interviews or coding challenges I have reached this point as well. I'm tired of the interview game. Just done. Can't do it anymore. The thought of interviewing makes me physically ill. I like to say that I'm retired form interviewing not software development. > 4. You pay what you want, per hour I'd work for $50K/year if the work was interesting and the people were nice. Heck, maybe even less than that in the right situation. In the meantime I'll be over here working on stuff that I find interesting in languages that I like (and aren't necessarily in demand). And gardening. And baking bread.